[Lingtyp] hello and goodbye: a message from outgoing and incoming ALT presidents

[Keren Rice]

Dear all

We (Jeff Good and Keren Rice) are writing to you as outgoing president and incoming president of ALT.

First from Keren. I would like to thank Jeff for the wonderful work he did over the past several years. In addition, thank you to Kristine Hildebrandt for her great work as secretary and her willingness to continue to play an active role in ALT as a member of the Executive Committee. And thank you too to the outgoing members of the Executive Committee, Silvia Luraghi, Stephen Matthews, and Felicity Meakins, as well as to Ljuba Veselinova, who basically is trading places with Kristine, and now will be ALT Secretary. I hope that none of you who have finished your terms mind if we go to you occasionally for advice in this transition period. Finally, it is important to keep in mind the work that Dmitry Idiatov has done as treasurer – we are fortunate that he is continuing in this position – and that Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm and the Linguistic Typology editorial team will continue to lead the journal.

Welcome to the new members of the Executive Committee, Hilary Chappell, Kristine Hildebrandt, Nikolaus Himmelmann, and Iker Salaberri, who join the continuing members Mark Dingemanse and Rachel Nordlinger.

I look forward to working with all of you so please feel free to let us know if there are issues that you would like to see addressed. ALT is a wonderful community, as can be seen by the many interesting exchanges on LingTyp and the outstanding journal as well as the conference and the awards. I hope that this new team is able to sustain the strong community – it takes a strong executive team, but also a strong community to do this.

A farewell from Jeff: I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to hold a leadership role in ALT during the last four years, and I am delighted that Keren Rice will be serving as the next President given her contributions to the field and extensive experience in roles like this one. As has been noted to me by a number of ALT members, interest in typology is increasing throughout the discipline of linguistics, and ALT plays a critical role in fostering debate and discussions about the world’s linguistic diversity and the practice of typology itself. There are significant opportunities for growth in the study of typology, and I fully expect that ALT will be able to take advantage of those in the coming years.

One of the most personally enriching aspects of serving as President of ALT was the opportunity that I had to interact with scholars interested in the world’s linguistic diversity who I otherwise only knew through their publications, and I would like to second Keren’s thanks to the outgoing members of the Executive Committee and to Kristine Hildebrandt, who supported the Association extensively during the last four years as ALT Secretary. I’d also like to thank Dmitry Idiatov for the crucial work he has done as Treasurer, which will continue into a second term. I feel it’s important to acknowledge the many individuals who served on ALT Award Committees during my term, as well as members of the Nominating Committee.

I plan to remain involved with ALT even though my term as President has now finished, and I look forward to see members of the Association at future meetings.

Thank you, all.

Jeff and Keren
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